The little mouse sat up on the pillow and
rubbed its nose with a pinkish paw. The baby mice in the cage
nuzzled their dead mother.
"Is there grass?"
"Yes--soft green grass."
"Do--boys in heaven--go in their bare feet?" Ah, small mind and
heart, so terrified and yet so curious!
"Indeed, yes." And there on his knees beside the white bed Peter
painted such a heaven as no theologue has ever had the humanity
to paint--a heaven of babbling brooks and laughing, playing
children, a heaven of dear departed puppies and resurrected
birds, of friendly deer, of trees in fruit, of speckled fish in
bright rivers. Painted his heaven with smiling eyes and death in
his heart, a child's heaven of games and friendly Indians, of
sunlight and rain, sweet sleep and brisk awakening.
The boy listened. He was silent when Peter had finished. Speech
was increasingly an effort.
"I should--like--to go there," he whispered at last.
He did not speak again during all the long afternoon, but just at
dusk he roused again.
"I would like--to see--the sentry," he said with difficulty.
And so again, and for the last time, Rosa's soldier from Salzburg
with one lung.
Through all that long day, then, Harmony sat over her work,
unaccustomed muscles aching, the whirring machines in her ears.
Monia, upset over the morning's excitement, was irritable and
unreasonable. The gold-tissue costume had come back from Le
Grande with a complaint.
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